The Human Experience

I’ve spent a lot of my time wishing to be “normal.” To wake up in the morning without pain in my chest. The sharp pain of anxiety or the sunken, empty heart for depression. Today’s therapy session focused on self compassion and holding a space for all of the emotions that I’ve tried so hard to suppress. All focusing on suffering as a part of the human experience. I am normal, it’s just my normal looks different from the normal I fantacized about.

If I had not posted a very personal insight into my life, many of my friends would not have known that I was ever suffering from PTSD and the illnesses that tend to tag along. I mask my pain, and I mask it well. Learning was a matter of survival. There were times my mother hit me and then asked why I was crying. Negative emotions like anger and sadness were only for her to experience. Allowing them to slip through the mask would only cause more more abuse. On a nonviolent occasion, I broke down crying at the dinner table after returning from a week-long trip. She laughed. She sat laughing hysterically at me while I sobbed due to the pressure of returning to a stressful environment. I was only fourteen.

I have worn my mas for so long, that I don’t know how to take it off. I am making progress in peeling it away. The first step is allowing myself to feel. No numbing the pain until I can face it alone. I need to feel it in the moment, around others so that they can validate and comfort me as needed. I have been missing that crucial part. (As hard as they tried, my cats couldn’t fulfil that role.) The urge to isolate coupled with my hermit baseline have impeded my ability to reach out when I need to most — the depths of my own despair. From the surface I appear fine, but beneath I am struggling to tread water.

If a friend came to me for support for the heavy weight of trauma, I would go out of my way to make them feel heard, validated, and comforted. Why can I not do this for myself? To really begin healing, I need to befriend myself. Reach out with open arms and a box of tissues to catch the many welcome tears. I need to cut myself some slack. I was only a child. Not many people would be able to withstand the abuse I endured. I hardly made it out myself. There is get strength in what I did and what I’m doing now to ensure this vicious cycle ends.

This is difficult. I will suffer more while I empty my baggage and neatly sort it out. I will cry, and not stop myself. I will feel anger. I will feel. Suffering is a part of the human experience. I will come out on top and be ready the rest of the experience.